Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1887-08-11


longs!-for the keen breath Of the desert
air; he dreams of the sight OF Zulu Impis
breaking on their foes like foam upon the
rocks, and his heart rises up in rebellion
against the strict limits Of the civilized
life
All! this civilization, what does it all
come to? For forty years and more lived
among the Savages, and studied them and
their ways; and now for several years |
have lived here in England, and have, in
my own stupid manner, done my best to
learn the ways of the children of Highland
what have found? A great gulf fxed?
No; only q very little one, that mans
thought may spring across. say that as
the savage is, SO is the white man, only the
latter is more inventive, and possesses the
faculty of combination; save and except,
also, that the savage, as l have known
him, is to large extent, free from the
greed of money, which eats like a cancer
into the heart Of the white man. 1t is q
depressing conclusion, but in all essentials
the savage and the child of civilization are
identical. dare say that the highly civil
lied lady reading this will smile at an old
fool of a hunters simplicity when she
thinks of her black, bead-bedecked sister;
and SO will the superfine, cultured idler
scientifically eating dinner at his club,
the cost of which would keep a starving
family for q week. And yet, my dear
young lady, what are those pretty things
round your neck?-they have a strong
family resemblance, especially when you
wear that very low dress, to the savage
woman's beads Your habit of turning
round and round to the sound of horns and
tom-toms, your fOndneSS Of pigments and
powders, the way in which you love IS
subjugate yourself to the warrior who has
captured you in marriage, and the quick
ness with which your taste in varied head
dresses varies-all these things suggest
touches Of kinship; and remember that in
all the fundamental principles of your ma
ture you are quite identical. AS for you,
sir, who also laugh, let some man come
and strike you in the face whilst you are
enjoying that Notwithstanding dish, and
we shall soon see how much Of the savage
there is in you.
There, might go on forever, but what
is the good? Civilization is only savagery
gilt-edged. A vainglory is it, and, like a
northern light, comes but to fade and leave
the sky more dark. Out of the soil Of saw
agery it has grown like tree, and, as |
believe, into the soil like tree, it will
once more, sooner or later, fall again, as
the Egyptian civilization fell as the He'll
enic civilization fell, and as the Roman
civilization and many others of which the
world has now lost count, fell also. Dc
not let me, however, be understood as de
crying our modern institutions, represent
ing as they do the gathered experience of
| humanity applied for the good of all. OF
| course they have great advantages hospi-
tails, for instance; but then, remember, we
breed the siclkly people that fill them. In
a savage land they do not exist. Besides,
| the question will arise, how many of these
| blessings are due to Christianity as dis
tinct from civilization? And so the bal
ance sways and the story runs-here a
| gain, there q loss, and natures great aver
age struck across the two whereof the
sum total forms one of the factors in that
mighty equation in which the result will
equal the unknown quantity of her pur-
poses.
make nc apology for this depression,
especially as this is an introduction, which
all young people and those who never like
to think (and it is bad habit will natur-
ally skip. 1t seems to me very desirable
| that we should sometimes try to under
| stand the limitations of CUR nature, so that
we may not be carried away by the pride
of knowledge. Mans cleverness is almost
| infinite, and stretches like an elastic band
but human nature is like an iron ring.
| You can go round and round it, you can
| polish it highly, you can even fatter it a
little on one side, whereby you can make
| it bulge out on the other; but you will
never while the world endures and man is
man, increase its total circumference. It
| is the one fixed, Interchangeable thing-fxed
as the stars, more enduring than the
mountains, as unalterable as the way of
the eternal. Human nature is Gods kali
eidOScOpe; the little bits of colOred glass
which represent our passions, hopes, fears,
joys, aspirations toward good and evil, and
what not, are turned in His mighty hand
| as surely and as certain as it turns the
stars, and continually fall into new pat
terms and combinations. But the compos-
| ing elements remain the same, nor will
there be one more bit of colored glass, nor
one less, for ever and ever.
This being so, supposing, for sake of ar
gument, we divide ourselves into twenty
| parts, nineteen savage and one civilized
we must look to the nineteen savage por-
tions of our nature, if we would really un-
derstand ourselves, and not to the TWEEN
tieth, which, though SO insignificant in re,
ality, is spread all over the other nineteen,
making them appear quite different from
what they really are; as the backing does
the boot or the veneer a table. 1t is on
the nineteen rough, serviceable, savage
portions that we fall back in emergencies,
not ON the polished but unsubstantial
| twentieth. Civilization should wipe away
our tears, and yet we weep and cannot be
comforted. Warfare is abhorrent to her,
and yet we strike out for hearth and home,
for honor and fair fame and can glorify in
| the blow.
So, when the heart is stricken, and the
! head is humbled in the dust, civilization
! fails us utterly. Back, back we creep, and
| lay US like little children on the great
! breast Of Nature, that she, perchance, may
soothe us and make us forget, or at least
rid remembrance of its sting. Who has
not in his great grief felt longing to look
| upon the outward features of the univer-
sal mother; to lie on the mountains and
watch the clouds drive across the sky. and
| the rollers break in thunder on the shore:
to let our poor struggling life mingle for a
while in her life; to feel the slow b at of
| her eternal heart and TO fOrCrat Orr Iyoac